Kansas Senate approves sex-selection abortion ban

The Kansas Senate Tuesday debated and passed, on a voice vote, Senate Bill 141, an act to save our littlest children from violent gender discrimination through sex-selection abortion. A recorded vote on final action will take place Wednesday.

Sen. Garrett Love, (R-Montezuma) carried SB 141 and referenced testimony he heard in the Senate Public Health and Welfare committee. “Whether it be a boy or girl, every life is precious,” Love said.

“The concept of aborting a baby just because it is a little girl or a little boy is very concerning. Sex-selection abortions are wrong.”

Perennial abortion supporters offered two amendments to “protect abortion providers.” Sen. David Haley (D-Kansas City) wanted to eliminate oral evidence and Sen. Laura Kelly (D-Topeka) wanted to create a special crime of lying about someone’s reason for abortion. Both amendments failed, Haley’s by a vote of 7-33 and Kelly’s by 12-28.

Sen. Ralph Ostmeyer (R-Grinnell) commended Sen. Love for bringing the bill forward and said that it is our duty to speak up for the unborn. Sen. Julia Lynn (R-Olathe) also spoke in support of the bill saying gender-based abortion is “an anathema.”

After final action, SB 141 heads to a receptive House, which overwhelmingly passed the sex selection ban as part of a larger bill, the 2012 Pro-Life Protections Act.

The Senate Public Health and Welfare committee had heard testimony last week from Population Research Institute president, Steven Mosher, that sex selection abortion “is discrimination that kills. Men and women here are fundamentally equal and simply being the ‘wrong’ gender is not grounds for being eliminated.”

Mosher commented that anti-female bias was stronger in certain communities globally, but noted the 2008 National Academy of Science report analyzing “son preference,” which found “evidence of sex selection, most likely at the prenatal stage” and likely to be “more widely practiced in the near future.” He said, other evidence besides that report suggests that, ” this ultimate form of misogyny is happening in the United States, and that it is ethically an excellent idea to say that we are not going to tolerate sex-selective abortion in our country, that we are going to defend the intrinsic dignity of unborn girls.“.

A series of undercover video “stings” by LiveAction at abortion clinics across the nation last year tested whether women who repeatedly expressed that they wanted an abortion only if the unborn child was a girl,would be able to obtain abortions. The videos appear to show they’d be able to do so with the clinic facilitating ultrasound to be sure a boy was not destroyed.

A 2006 Zogby International Poll, surveying over thirty thousand citizens, showed 86% public support for banning sex-selection abortion.